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What are essential plugins for a new WP site?

by Alexander Goh
7 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
WordPress plugins help you build a WordPress website with many cool features without any programming skills. Below are a lists of the recommended plugins for ya WP sites...
  1. SI Captcha Anti-spam - Adds Captcha anti-spam images on the comment form, registration form, login or all. It helps to stop comment spam.
  2. All In One SEO Pack - It takes care of SEO for you.
  3. Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin generates a special XML sitemap which help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your WordPress website.
  4. GetSocial - It adds a lightweight and intelligent floating social media sharing box on your blog posts. Because the sharing box is floating, it reminds people sharing your post to their social networks. This plugin is getting popular recently.
  5. Contact Form 7 - It helps you create a contact form easily. You just need to copy and paste the short code to your page or post where you need to add a contact form.
  6. WP DB Backup - Backup your WordPress database on-demand or by schedule.
  7. Secure WordPress - This plugin makes your WordPress website more secure by removing many security loopholes.
  8. Google Analytics - This plugin adds the required javascript for google analytics. You only need to enter your web property ID generated from your Google analytics account. It is quite handy for people who do not feel comfortable to edit programming files.
  9. WP Super Cache - It generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress website to speed up the loading of your website. It is helpful when your website size is getting bigger.
  10. SEOPressor - This is a paid premium Wodpress plugin. It checks all the on-page factors for your post and page. It works like your private SEO consultant. It will help you save hundreds of $$ on SEO.
Do share other essential plugins if you know of any=)

Cheers=)
#essential #essential plugins #plugins #site #wordpress checklist #wordpress plugins #wordpress theme #wordpress website
  • Profile picture of the author Jassen
    [DELETED]
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexander Goh
      Hi Jassen, thank you for sharing. Well basically I believe it depends on the nature of ya biz and website as well. The plugins above have been useful to me in many ways.
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  • Profile picture of the author KattyHowells
    How about 404 Redirect? Many people who just start using WordPress don't really know how to handle broken links, which could affect their website reputation in the long run.
    I personally found it very helpful so far.
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    • Profile picture of the author Leslie B
      A while ago I covered my answer to this question on my site. It's a question I'm asked regularly (by clients, for example) or that I see a lot on different forums or Facebook groups related to WordPress. My answer? Here it is:

      Not one plugin is essential if you don't need it to reach the goal you have set for your site. Confusing, thought so.

      Honestly, there are about 4 plugins I use on practically all my blogs, all the rest depends on what I want to do with my blog. I always use WordPress SEO by Yoast (if my theme doesn't come with the required SEO settings), Commentluv premium (that integrates with G.A.S.P. and gives me better spam protection then Akismet, plus for Akismet you need to pay monthly or yearly if you are using it on a commercial blog, I rather have a monthly payment, but G.A.S.P. is also available for free in the WordPress plugin directory), iThemes security (to help secure my site against hacker attacks, Wordfence is another great one) and a caching plugin especially on sites that require a lot of resources.

      Besides those it depends, if I'm in need for a specific feature for a site I'll add more plugins (for example Gravity Forms is I need a contact page) or add code to my theme.

      The one rule I have is this: I ask myself the question "Am I adding this plugin because I want it or because I need it?". If I only want it, I usually don't get it, if I need it, I'll add it.

      The same for my clients. I have a list of plugins I usually install, but if they don't need them all, I'll tell them so and don't add them. No need to slow down the blog for nothing.

      Speaking of slowing your site down, once you have installed the plugins you want or think you need on your site, install P3 (Plugin Performance Profiler) and let it run a test. It tells you how your plugins are affecting the loading time of your site. If you feel a plugin is taking too much time, you can look for other plugins that do the same but require less resources.

      Leslie
      Signature
      Taking it one day at a time!
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  • Profile picture of the author Reddy20
    SEO & Internet Marketing



    Wordbooker – Posts an update, link and thumbnail image to your Facebook page when publishing a new post on your site. Great for marketing. The interface needs a little tidying up but there are heaps of options and is one of the few we could find at the time of writing that allows you to choose which Facebook page to publish to (if you are an admin of multiple FB pages).



    MailChimp Widget – Growing email lists are a necessity in the world of Internet marketing and we love to use MailChimp for our list management needs. This handy plugin provides an email list sign-up widget that you can easily drop onto a sidebar, specifying which list you want customers to sign up to.


    Images & Video

    NextGen Gallery – WordPress has a built in media library which manages graphics but it is very basic. NextGen Gallery gives you a lot of control over your uploaded images, allowing you to create galleries and albums of galleries. It also includes a neat drag ‘n’ drop image sort feature and adds insert buttons to the page and post editor.

    Lightbox 2 – We use this plugin with NextGen Gallery giving us the nice lightbox image display with the faded background. The plugin is light-weight using jQuery and doesn’t conflict with any other plugins.

    Premium Slider – A very flexible image scrolling plugin that has a lot of features and flexibility. We use the low-cost paid version of this plugin to access all of its features, however, there is a free version called Easing Slider if you want to try before you buy.

    ProPlayer – Embedding YouTube videos is pretty easy but how do you go about hosting your own video clips? The ProPlayer plugin makes this easy and gives you good control over how the video is displayed in general and per video. Oh – and it also lets you embed YouTube videos too.


    Website Maintenance & Customisation

    BM Custom Login – A very handy plugin that allows you to change the picture used by the WordPress login system. We use this to brand the login box to match the customers website front-end giving the site that extra neat little touch.

    WP Realtime Sitemap – Many sites now have a page dedicated as a sitemap listing links to all the pages as a handy reference. This plugin allows you to generate this automatically and gives you the options to include or exclude pages, posts, categories and tags and is easily included onto a page or post using a shortcode. Everything is classed allowing you to change the look and feel via CSS.

    Widget Logic – Sometimes you need a widget to be displayed on a particular page or pages and not on others. This plugin uses WordPress’ own logic statements to give you control over when a widget is displayed on the sidebar. Perhaps displaying your MailChimp signup only on your contact page.

    Better Delete Revision & Revision Control – A bundle of two plugins here. The first scans through all your posts and pages giving you the option to delete all those revisions that have built up over time, bloating your SQL database. Once you have deleted them and optimised the database to prevent them from accumulating again, the second plugin places limits on the number of revisions kept for a page or post. We normally set this to a limit of 2.

    Always Edit In HTML – OK we’re blowing our own trumpet here a little by including our own plugin but it is very handy. The plugin allows you to disable the visual editor tab, forcing the editor to open a page or post in HTML mode and preserving your HTML formatting.
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    • Profile picture of the author Alexander Goh
      Originally Posted by Reddy20 View Post

      SEO & Internet Marketing



      Wordbooker – Posts an update, link and thumbnail image to your Facebook page when publishing a new post on your site. Great for marketing. The interface needs a little tidying up but there are heaps of options and is one of the few we could find at the time of writing that allows you to choose which Facebook page to publish to (if you are an admin of multiple FB pages).



      MailChimp Widget – Growing email lists are a necessity in the world of Internet marketing and we love to use MailChimp for our list management needs. This handy plugin provides an email list sign-up widget that you can easily drop onto a sidebar, specifying which list you want customers to sign up to.


      Images & Video

      NextGen Gallery – WordPress has a built in media library which manages graphics but it is very basic. NextGen Gallery gives you a lot of control over your uploaded images, allowing you to create galleries and albums of galleries. It also includes a neat drag ‘n’ drop image sort feature and adds insert buttons to the page and post editor.

      Lightbox 2 – We use this plugin with NextGen Gallery giving us the nice lightbox image display with the faded background. The plugin is light-weight using jQuery and doesn’t conflict with any other plugins.

      Premium Slider – A very flexible image scrolling plugin that has a lot of features and flexibility. We use the low-cost paid version of this plugin to access all of its features, however, there is a free version called Easing Slider if you want to try before you buy.

      ProPlayer – Embedding YouTube videos is pretty easy but how do you go about hosting your own video clips? The ProPlayer plugin makes this easy and gives you good control over how the video is displayed in general and per video. Oh – and it also lets you embed YouTube videos too.


      Website Maintenance & Customisation

      BM Custom Login – A very handy plugin that allows you to change the picture used by the WordPress login system. We use this to brand the login box to match the customers website front-end giving the site that extra neat little touch.

      WP Realtime Sitemap – Many sites now have a page dedicated as a sitemap listing links to all the pages as a handy reference. This plugin allows you to generate this automatically and gives you the options to include or exclude pages, posts, categories and tags and is easily included onto a page or post using a shortcode. Everything is classed allowing you to change the look and feel via CSS.

      Widget Logic – Sometimes you need a widget to be displayed on a particular page or pages and not on others. This plugin uses WordPress’ own logic statements to give you control over when a widget is displayed on the sidebar. Perhaps displaying your MailChimp signup only on your contact page.

      Better Delete Revision & Revision Control – A bundle of two plugins here. The first scans through all your posts and pages giving you the option to delete all those revisions that have built up over time, bloating your SQL database. Once you have deleted them and optimised the database to prevent them from accumulating again, the second plugin places limits on the number of revisions kept for a page or post. We normally set this to a limit of 2.

      Always Edit In HTML – OK we’re blowing our own trumpet here a little by including our own plugin but it is very handy. The plugin allows you to disable the visual editor tab, forcing the editor to open a page or post in HTML mode and preserving your HTML formatting.
      Wow! Thanks for sharing=)! I will look into it.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dennis Millbrath
    Great list, if you are working with a membership plugin too, sometimes it gets tricky.
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  • Profile picture of the author ankurgarg
    following are essential plugin you need to have for your website in word press.
    1. search engine optimization and search engine marketing
    plugins required for this purpose are word press seo, word press Google analytic,
    word booker, contact form7, mail chimp widget.

    2. image and video plugins are
    next gen gallery ,light box 2,premium slider,pro player

    3. website maintenance and customization plugins are
    BM custom login, word press real time sitemap, widget logic, better delete revision and revision control,

    Remember always edit in html editor.
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